Old-Fashioned Brown Sugar Cookie Recipe

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Saturday, September 23, 1911: Mosey got me started in the arts of cookie making. As a whole the result wasn’t’ so bad for all that matters any way I don’t like that kind of employment very well because my achievements in that direction would be very apt to prove failures oftener than successes.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

I love all the different names Grandma uses when writing about her family and friends. You can get a sense how Grandma is feeling based upon what she calls people. Sometimes she calls her sister Ruth, “Rufus” and today her mother is Mosey. Mosey sounds like an affectionate term–though it sounds like Grandma didn’t like to cook.

I wonder what kind of cookies she made.. . . Mmm . . . Maybe she made Brown Sugar Cookies.

Here’s a wonderful old recipe for Brown Sugar Cookies. This is one of my children’s favorite cookies. They are more raised and softer than is typical of many modern drop cookie recipes—but they are superb.

I often add chocolate chips or walnuts into the batter before making the cookies.

I got the recipe from my mother-in-law, but it would be typical of cookie recipes from years ago—though obviously it’s been adapted for use with a modern range.

This recipe is from an era when pasteurized milk was not the norm since it calls for sour milk. In the old days raw milk would sour—but still be good for cooking. Vinegar can be used to “sour” pasteurized milk.

A hundred years ago lard would have generally been used in this recipe–though Crisco was rolled out in 1911 by Proctor and Gamble.